The battle took place in the strategically important mountain town of Shusha on the evening of 8 May 1992, and fighting swiftly concluded the next day after Armenian forces captured it and drove out the defending Azerbaijanis.

[12] In February 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh had been an autonomous oblast for over sixty years within the borders of the Azerbaijan SSR, though with a majority Armenian population.

Following its government's decision to secede from Azerbaijan and re-unify with Armenia, the conflict erupted into a larger scale ethnic feud between Armenians and Azerbaijanis living in the Soviet Union.

[13] The advanced weaponry of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, fighter jets and helicopter gunships deployed by both sides marked the moment of all-out war.

This operation was conducted by Azerbaijan's then defence minister Tajedin Mekhtiev and was meant to prepare the ground for a future attack on Stepanakert.

An old fortress with high walls, the town is five kilometers (four miles) to the south of Stepanakert and perched on a mountaintop with limited vehicular access.

Dubbed the "flying telephone poles" due to their long, shaped charges, the rockets caused devastating damage to buildings over the course of the siege, hitting residential houses, schools, the city's silk factory, and maternity hospital.

[18] Once the region's Communist Party headquarters and largest city with a population of 70,000, the fighting and shelling had driven away nearly 20,000 of Stepanakert's residents and forced the remainder to live underground in basements.

"[19] Aside from shelling the city, the Azerbaijani military also launched aerial sorties and staged several ground attacks on the outskirts of Stepanakert.

Instead, in conjunction with Ter-Tadevosyan (known among his troops as Komandos), who was tasked to lead the assault, they devised a strategy of launching several diversionary attacks against the adjacent villages to draw out the town's defenders.

[24] Since late February, the Azerbaijani military had been reinforcing Shusha and ammunition, and had been shuttling in helicopters to evacuate the town's civilian population.

Orujev's men were bolstered by a Chechen volunteer contingent led by guerrilla warlord Shamil Basayev, who were among the last to leave the city.

[26] A famous tank battle took place between the two sides when an Armenian T-72, the first to enter Shusha, encountered its Azerbaijani counterpart on the northern approach to the town.

[7] After capture of the town, the city was looted and burnt by aggrieved Armenian civilians from nearby Stepanakert, who had endured months of bombing and shelling from Azerbaijani forces.

Several days after the assault, Armenian forces launched an attack in the region of Lachin and opened up a 8-kilometer corridor connecting the enclave to Armenia proper.

The loss of Shusha later led to mass demonstrations in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku against newly reinstated president Ayaz Mütallibov.

In May 1992, the commander of the CIS forces in the Caucasus, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, warned that any Turkish incursion would lead to "the verge of a third world war, and that cannot be allowed.

"[34] The Armenian victory in Shusha had many Turkish officials accusing Armenia of seeking to invade next the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan.

Nonetheless, the Turkish army and intelligence services launched undercover operations to supply Azerbaijan with arms and military personnel.

[citation needed] Western authors reported several major shipments of weapons from Turkey, including bringing an arsenal of Soviet-made arms from the former East Germany.

[citation needed] On the international stage it lobbied various organizations and promoted a pro-Azerbaijani bent of mediation and conflict resolution efforts.

The festivities included a military parade in Renaissance Square in Stepanakert and a cross-country marathon organized by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's youth wing that began from Armenia and ended in Shusha during the run up to 9 May.

[citation needed] In Armenia, prime minister Serzh Sargsyan inaugurated the naming of a square in the capital of Yerevan after Shusha.